A TRUE BELIEVER
Pop superstar P!nk used to be angry. After almost 25 years in the industry, and two decades of love and loss, she tells Bridget Jones she still cares passionately – but she also really just wants to dance.
Alecia Moore’s 11-year-old daughter Willow doesn’t have a cellphone. That makes her something of an anomaly with her friends, but Moore won’t have her arm twisted. No cellphone, no social media access, it didn’t matter. Not so long ago, Willow still knew enough to ask why strangers want her mum dead.
“I get death threats a lot – a lot, a lot,” says Moore, better known as multi-award winning singer P!nk. “And [Willow] asked me the other day, ‘why do you do it?’ A nd I said, ‘do what?’ And she said, ‘fight’.”
The answer wa ss imple. Moore believes in a lot of things.
“I told her, I believe in equality. I believe in inclusivity. I believe in what I believe in very strongly and I believe that if you can help, you should. And if you have a platform, you have a responsibility.”
Moore was, she says, born this way, raised this way. The musician is a fighter .She“can handle it”.
“[I told Willow] I want to live forever, I want to be with you forever, but if I am going to die, it’s going to be on the mountain I believe in standing on. And that’s why and I’m sorry that this affects you, but I believe in what I believe in and I want to help.”
She thinks her daughter understood quickly. She can see the same passion for justic einhe r, after all.
Even in this day and age of misinformation and doxxing and keyboard warriors, it’ s still a wild thing to hear :apop star has to explain to thei rc hild why ther ea re people who want them dead, simply because they speak out about women’ sr ights ,o r those of the LGBTQI+ community. Because they once appeared naked in an adver tfo r animal right sc harity Peta. Because they advocate fo rc hildr en a round the world. Or because once upon a time, they offered to pay the fines dished out to the Norwegian women’s beach handball team, after they swapped their bikini bottoms fo rs horts , ju st like their male counterparts.
And more surprisingly, perhaps, is how Moore says all of this with no hint of fear. A world away from the madness, curled upon a couch in California, ginormous hat on her head, mug of something warm in hand, and zoom screen on her lap, this is a woman with fir einhe r belly. A woman who doesn’t give a rats about what other people think of her.
“I look at that side of politics and they’re all just s ona sty. The things they say to you, man if someone was to say that to my face… it’ scr azy what we can say online,” she says.
“[And] I think the people that know me, know me really well and they know me true. I think the people that don’t, have no f…ing clue about me. They think I’m this angry, man-eating, dumbass. And I’m just the most thoughtful, intentional, generous, loving, goofy, laughing person that you would ever want to meet.”
For those who don’t know her, Moore, as P!nk, isa true blue modern day pop superstar. In 2000, she elbowed her way onto the charts with a debut album and inescapable singles such as There You Go. Radio ear worms such as Get the Party Started and Just Like A Pill followed, as well as sales of more than 40 million albums, three Gram my Awards and now, an eighth world tour, the Summer Carnival Stadium tour, visiting New Zealand in March next year in support of her ninth album, the newly released Trustfall.
Like mostartists on a PR run, she says this album is “the best of the best” of her work, but puts the
credit on those so-called unprecedented times we have collectively experienced over the past few years. Instead of touring, the 43-year-old had all the time in the world, which meant there was the luxury to draw out the songwriting process – she had the time to edit and rework and narrow down what it was she wanted to say. The result: party bangers you want to get up and dance to, and heartfelt letters to those lost.
“[The album] feels whole. Because on one hand, it’s like man, it’s really hard. Life is really hard and adulting and loving people and being in a relationship and having children and losing your father and grief,” she says. “And on the other hand, [that’s] enough.
I just want to dance, I want to f…ing dance.”
The joy is definitely spirited, but where perhaps anger once prowled, grief now lurks undeniably in the background of the music. Both Moore and her young son Jameson, now 6, got very sick early in the Covid pandemic, her father Jim Moore died in 2021 after living with prostate cancer for eight years, her family’s long-time nanny also recently died, and Moore was close with Lisa Marie Presley, who passed away last month. The album tries to look to the light, to putting faith in other people, and facing fears head on. Easier said than done, even for the woman who wrote it.
“The world scares me right now,” Moore says. “The hatred and the hostility in general is really scary to me. It feels like it’s at a new level. I’m still afraid of sharks – Jaws ruined my life. But all kinds of things [scare me]; I’m afraid of getting sick, of being misunderstood. I’m afraid of hurting someone, I’m afraid of bullshit and I’m afraid of my kids not being OK. I’m afraid of losing my mum, I’m afraid of all the things.
“When I lost my dad, and when Jameson was really sick with Covid, it [became] really easy to distil life down into what matters. And really, the only thing I care about is living authentically and seeing my kids be up and be OK.”
She recently told Women’s Health magazine that she “probably [became] a bit depressed from all of the loss” she has experienced, adding, “I kind of feel like we were walking around with this low-level trauma that some of us were aware of and some of us weren’t.”
The loss of those close to her, and that fear felt by so many during the pandemic, fed her approach to songwriting, but she has always been someone who tells it like it is – even if her biting words are cocooned in chart-friendly melodies. Her approach has always been about discovering what is true. What makes the singer uncomfortable and what does she have to get out of her head?
“What I’ve realised in my travels over the last 20-something years, is that we’re all going through this human experience together and I feel like I’ve grown up with everyone – we’ve grown up together. And each album is like a chapter in my life and in this experience that I’m having. So I try to be as open and honest and vulnerable as possible, and also I know we all need a f…ing break from time to time, we’re in constant overwhelm.”
She says even before global lockdowns, her concerts had become “like group therapy, a group exorcism, we’re all letting that shit go together and it feels so good”. And to say her live shows push the boundaries of showmanship – and at times, gravity – feels like an understatement. A trained gymnast, P!nk puts her body on the line to create an experience unmatched by fellow performers. Think aerial silks, aerial acrobatics, aerial stunts. Basically, if it’s up high and dangerous, she’s in. This is someone who at 19, decided to film a music video where she raced a motorbike after only just learning how to ride one. So to try and top her previous stunts for her next world tour is proving difficult – but not impossible.
“I’m trying to see what I can do and [still] stay alive… It’s so much fun to learn new tricks – especially at 43. So I just have to be in the best shape of my life – I get really strong – and just hope for the best. But we’re always trying to top ourselves, so at some point it’s going to be, like, one night only – there she went!
“I was trying to do this flying carpet thing, powered by drones, but they were worried the drones could get hacked and they could take me away…”
Her young family will join her on the road, as they always have. But she says now her children are getting older, that touring life is starting to look a little different.
“This time will be a little different for Willow, because she has needs. She wants to be in her theatre production in July, so she gets July and I have to be home for the performances. So really, routing this tour was like the Willow and Jameson tour, and there’s Carey’s [Hart, her husband of 17 years] needs – everybody has needs!”
Almost a quarter of a century since her first album, life and her priorities have clearly shifted. I tell her I recently saw an interview where she said she feels much calmer now than she did as a 20-year-old, fresh on the scene. Aside from the obvious global success, legions of fans and the awards and record sales, what’s changed?
“I have so much more love in my life now. I have really, really deep relationships, good friends. I’ve got delicious little humans living in my house that are just tiny little psychopaths. And I’ve been married for 17 years now – and that’s nuts.
“Back then, I was a broken puppy. I had so much to prove to myself and to the world and I was angry. I was so angry and I didn’t really have anywhere to put it, so I just put it everywhere.
“I would say I still have anger and I’m still motivated, but I’m a lot more directed. It doesn’t just spill out. It’s contained.
“I don’t think I’m any calmer, though. I think I’m just a little seasoned, maybe.”
I told her, I believe in equality. I believe in inclusivity. I believe in what I believe in very strongly and I believe that if you can help, you should. And if you have a platform, you have a responsibility.
P!nk’s Summer Carnival Stadium tour, Auckland and Dunedin, March, 2024, livenation.co.nz